i thank the good Lord that psileas and dejordan are giving their usual level headed comments; i would love to hear silentmav weigh in too

as i have commented so many times before, i try to take each "era" on its own terms and i appreciate the development of the game and how each era has been built upon previous eras.

i dont believe in putting players through an imaginary "time machine" and transporting them into previous or current eras. it disrespects the real context that made a player great in the first place. i, for one, am happy just commenting on the player in his specific era and appreciating him for what he was and what he contributed to the game.

for example, because of the lack of anti-fighting rules, the players took out payback on the court. going down the lane was much rougher, hand checking was the norm and fights broke out often. kareem would just get thugs going after him (and every team had an "enforcer") that it amazes me that he scored with all of those things working against him.

it would not be fair to transport the current players into that kind of rough and tumble 70s ball.

i fell in love with the nba by watching much of 70s hoops and there are so many hof-ers from this era. it is not a fluke: these were truly great players. calvin murphy, cowens, tiny, pistol, bob lanier, bill walton, clyde frazier etc etc...

special props to kareem. as great as he was in the early 80s-- he absolutely dominated the league in the 70s. if you only had seen kareem in the 70s, you guys would have just been amazed-- he had it all. plus he would consistently hit that sky hook-- even from as far as 15 ft out

the team ball, overall was better too. as a whole, guys werent worried about individual stats as much as today. certainly, the contract situation was much different back then.

and i loved the mid 70s celts. hondo, jo jo white, don chaney and yes dave cowens made for a formidable team. cowens was perhaps the grittiest players i have ever seen-- wes unseld and jerry sloan too.

if i dare compare cowens to a current player, imagine a ben wallace (who is a better shotblocker than cowens) as a lockdown one on one defender, could score in the low block and a great passer.

and there was the intangibles that cowens brought to those celtic championship clubs: a mental toughness that cannot be taught and along with havlicek, a leadership and winning attitude

70s hoops was just different from 80s and 90s and 21 century nba basketball. i dont see it as a "weaker" era

the one good point that was made was with a lot of the talent going to the aba. before 1976, the aba had some fantastic players. but remember too that in 1976, there were only 18 teams. that means only 216 players in the league; the talent was not as diffused as it is today with 30 teams and 15 player rosters

There is no such thing as a weak era. 20 years from now people could be calling us a weak era. Why? Because the game has evolved. Some people call the 60's a weak era. Why? Because we know what we do about the game 40 years later. 40 years you can obtain a lot of new knowledge. The players in the 60's didn't have this knowledge, so they had to work with what they had. Which was far less than what we know now. Great players were ahead of their time which is a reason why they're good. Not because they were in a weak era, because they used their own knowledge to their advantage.

I don't like how some will disrespect the past almost entirely, but obviously all basketball eras are not equal. I've had to face this when ranking and comparing NBA players all-time, like in the ISH 100 list.

I guess you can level the field this way:

Hyothetically, if you take a player from far enough in the past, and give him the advantages of modern training, the luxeries of today, the knowledge that has been built from the past, then that player is going to be better.

Take away those modern advantages of a player today and give him the situation of the past, and he's going to be a worse player.

Anyhow, there's a lot of differences between NBA eras. Take those hypotheticals above and put players in different eras and some players might not be NBA players in another era and that includes some of today's players.

When you compare eras directly, you see that the NBA pre-Russell was weaker. The NBA when it was the BAA pre-Mikan was even weaker; they didn't even shoot free throws well back then. Basketball was a lot different before the shot clock.

Many would say that the NBA took some steps back in the 1970s. They lost a lot of talent to the ABA and league expansion made for more parity and brought in some lesser talent. Underclassmen started going pro regularly. Scoring dropped.

Scoring came back up in the 1980s, although not quite to 1960s levels. Basketball wasn't as fast-paced as it used to be but FG percentages were at an all-time high. Defense gets more physical and the league began making rules aimed against that.

Now and since the mid-90s, scoring averages have dropped to their lowest since the invention of the shot clock. The 3 pointer has become more a part of the game, but overall shooting percentages have declined significantly and offenses have been stalled to half-court sets. The traditional, dominating big man has all but faded away. And fans and GMs are looking for the next Jordan. You could make a case that this is a weak era.

Players who have ability above and beyond their peers exist in every era, it pure imaginitive speculation to say that they would or would not excel in this era. I like to think that the past players gave today's players a foundation to build their own games on and they should not be disregarded. So quit doing it, or you will find yourself 20 years down the road trying to explain what was so great about LeBron James to a bunch of people who aren't listening.

I don't like how some will disrespect the past almost entirely, but obviously all basketball eras are not equal. I've had to face this when ranking and comparing NBA players all-time, like in the ISH 100 list.

I guess you can level the field this way:

Hyothetically, if you take a player from far enough in the past, and give him the advantages of modern training, the luxeries of today, the knowledge that has been built from the past, then that player is going to be better.

Take away those modern advantages of a player today and give him the situation of the past, and he's going to be a worse player.

Anyhow, there's a lot of differences between NBA eras. Take those hypotheticals above and put players in different eras and some players might not be NBA players in another era and that includes some of today's players.

When you compare eras directly, you see that the NBA pre-Russell was weaker. The NBA when it was the BAA pre-Mikan was even weaker; they didn't even shoot free throws well back then. Basketball was a lot different before the shot clock.

Many would say that the NBA took some steps back in the 1970s. They lost a lot of talent to the ABA and league expansion made for more parity and brought in some lesser talent. Underclassmen started going pro regularly. Scoring dropped.

Scoring came back up in the 1980s, although not quite to 1960s levels. Basketball wasn't as fast-paced as it used to be but FG percentages were at an all-time high. Defense gets more physical and the league began making rules aimed against that.

Now and since the mid-90s, scoring averages have dropped to their lowest since the invention of the shot clock. The 3 pointer has become more a part of the game, but overall shooting percentages have declined significantly and offenses have been stalled to half-court sets. The traditional, dominating big man has all but faded away. And fans and GMs are looking for the next Jordan. You could make a case that this is a weak era.

good post

it is facile to take the nba out ofits own historical context. in another post you wisely mentioned the effect of racism in society and its overflow into the nba. it would be very difficult to know how current players as well as players in the post 70s era would be able to deal with racism because they had never experienced it as the gianta of yesteryear

the 70s was an era of rampant drugs. how could players of precious eras or the eras post-"just say no" know what it was like to play under those conditions.

hard to really speculate how russ and wilt would have dealt with the big money and 24 hour coverage of the 21st century. who would have been in THEIR posse?